Build homes in London not in countryside, says ex-minister

Tuesday 26 November 2013 09:27 BST

A former Cabinet minister has attacked calls for housing to be built in the countryside for Londoners, saying more homes should be squeezed into the capital instead.

John Gummer claimed there was an “entirely fictitious view” in Whitehall that planning curbs were holding up growth. “You don’t improve our cities by moving people out into the countryside, into the suburbs,” said the ex-minister who is now Lord Deben and lives in a Suffolk beauty spot.

“There is an overwhelming housing shortage in our cities, and that is where you build.”

His attack was aimed at Conservative Planning Minister Nick Boles, who is making it easier to build in rural areas.

Lord Deben, a former agriculture minister and environment secretary who lives near Debenham, told the Eastern Daily Press it was an “urban myth” that building outside the big cities was necessary.

But Labour’s shadow minister for London, Sadiq Khan, said: “London’s housing crisis is so severe that we need a huge programme of house building both within the city itself and in the surrounding areas and South East.”